First
by ChronicallyinFlaming
Summary: Shepard and Liara welcome their first child into their family and learn the tribulations of parenthood.


**The Prompt: M!Shep/Liara First Baby**

_There are a ton of fics of F!Shep and Liara welcoming their first asari daughter, but OP hasn't seen any for M!Shep and Liara!_

_I feel like M!Shep would be completely and utterly in love with his new little girl, and OP would looooooooove to have some cavity-inducing fluff with the new little family!_

**The Fill:  
**

* * *

Aside from his title of 'Father,' John was discovering another new adjective to describe himself as: a sop.

It had been six long months, sleepless, hellish, fearful, and he still had yet to not love his daughter with a sickening adoration that made even changing diapers fun and heartwarming. Liara had stopped being as mesmerized before their daughter's ever move before the first disconnected terminal she was working on, and now settled into waiting for her to age, day by day. It fell to John to take the pictures and vids of the baby, as she blinked or reached for her toes again.

Their days broke down into not nights/evenings/afternoons/mornings. Such descriptions had no meaning in this lab. There was only Mommy Time and Daddy Time. Something John was glad to experience, while Liara shifted the crawling increasingly babbling baby onto him, with a grim, "Dad time."

"Dad time? Dad time!"

Both he and Alannah applauded the decision.

Then only she, as she began to wail and had John on the ground, also weeping and waiting for his bondmate to save them both.

So many areas in which he'd felt stunted, emotionally, were growing. Caring for another, being open about his emotions, all that occurred when his daughter had come about. From the moment she'd been put into his arms, he'd been stunned by her presence. Liara had learned to take things in stride, even the squirming child that was half her and half of her. But John was still floundering around with her.

He put up with the children's television shows and the loud toys and the screaming at three in the morning, as Liara just lay there and pretended to be dead.

He learned the unfairness of having to change a baby in a men's room.

He learned how much a stroller could hold, and that it wasn't enough to handle all the stuffed animals his daughter loved. Yet moving two strollers and a pack slung around his shoulders was still easier than dealing with his infant child screaming over leaving behind her favorite gnawed upon hanar figure.

Shepard knew he was a mess. Even excepting the stares he got as he put his daughter into the infant-backpack that went around his chest and his constant narrating their surroundings to her. That thing didn't go so well back on Earth. Humans stared, wondering if this man with the spit up on his shirt and goofy voices and stuffed animals in the stroller, was really the John Shepard. Sometimes, they would applaud him, in general, and other times they would want to flirt in ways that even he picked up on. Or they might sneer over him with his non-human baby. 'Alien-lover.' As though anyone could not love Alannah.

Although here on Thessia, for all its other problems, he felt pretty well accepted. The bathrooms were not divided into gender, which was nice when finding a baby-changing station.

Aethyta had even commented on it, laughing over him carrying her everywhere. "She has you wrapped around her finger, already."

"Of course she does." Then his daughter proceeded to use a move she'd learned from her mother and hit John upside the head with a stuffed animal. Only without any affection.

How Liara's half-sisters and their own daughters had laughed over meeting him. Then somehow managed to dodge both their youngest sibling and her husband when they came looking for a babysitter. For all of Liara's reassurances about traits, about how that had been generations ago, John was still convinced their child had some krogan in her. She really did hit her soft little head against things like the bars of her crib. And her screaming. No human or asari sounded like that. Not even after the Reapers had gotten ahold of them.

He'd wiped orange paste from his eyes, and complained to his partner and to Alannah that Grunt had been an easier child thus far. Even when he got ahold of those dinosaur-type cloned animals.

Still, for all the sleepless nights as he became the one to rise and check on their screaming infant, Shepard was glad to retreat into their family. Easier to feed and watch the baby grow, then deal with the Alliance government that was either worshipful or annoyed by his presence. Or, later, the asari government of Matriarchs who had been alive before even his country had been formed. They'd been around when his race was discovering space flight, and now they had to watch this maiden who was doing her best to help her people stumble into their grand halls with her exhausted bondmate and a baby on her hip. The looks and shaking of heads, as Shepard lost consciousness and fell over. With the baby still strapped to him.

"We are not bad parents, Shepard." Liara assured him. As they spent another hour in the hovercar, with her behind the wheel, hoping this would do the trick and convince Alannah that she was not being tortured and that she only needed to close those blue eyes to make everything better.

His lover was a big believer in logic and was convinced that she could reason with this screaming writhing figure. Either in her crib or in one of her parent's arms as they walked around the apartment and tried to sooth her. "Please go to sleep. Please. Just an hour."

It hurt to blink. "Aren't babies supposed to sleep a lot? So they can grow?"

"Maybe its better she not get bigger. Where's her hanar doll?"

On the couch, expensive and marked now with paint from Alannah knocking over an entire can of it while her parents had tried to redecorate the room, Shepard just lie there. "I told you, she threw it out the window! Right when I was driving down the freeway. Over the side of the bridge too."

"Oh, goddess! Now she'll never fall asleep."

There would come a time, he was assured, that he would miss these days of crying and three o' clock feedings. Remember them with nostalgia, rather than a shudder of horror.

It wasn't as though there weren't little things that made him love his daughter all over again. Like when she'd first been put into his arms, minutes after Liara had her time with her. Watching them, marveling at the bond between mother and child and his own minor role in this, wondering in the most abstract way of fatherhood . A nothing-weight in unsteady arms Shepard had been sure he would drop. The little helpless scrunched face and soft crest. Impossible not to look at and have your heart stolen, as he could only stand there and watch her.

And now, her older if not much bigger, John clung to that moment. As tightly as when she'd taken his finger in those small hands. No longer a wailing baby handed off by her red-eyed mother, but a symbol of hope and the love of her exhausted parents. She had her whole future before her, an entire lifetime of whatever she wanted, her life stretched out and innocent as any blank slate. It wasn't anything new, every parent had to realize that fact when seeing their child, but it was something that kept coming to Shepard. His daughter, that would hopefully never know any pain or fear and would never have to go through what her parents had suffered. She would be brilliant as her mother, as kind as Liara, with all her grace and her smile and perhaps a little of her father's ability to forgive, but mostly his luck.

If he could have blessed Alannah with one thing, it would be a pleasant life. Since for all his other abilities John could not magically make this so, he would instead simply dedicate his life to helping make that blessing come true. On the couch, Liara slept facedown, spine painfully curved, butt up. Adorably at risk of suffocating herself, and he carefully nudged her with his foot onto her side. His wife, and such a small word that fell so utterly short of what she was to him, as 'husband' was to her. All they had been through, for this moment, with their little blue daughter.

Those serious blue eyes looked up at him from that tiny face. Accusing him with the very features he'd help give her. Hopefully, she wouldn't develop his chin. Mouth forming words that had him leaning in, hopeful. "Dah."

Shepard was willing to take that as an attempt at finally saying his name or at least the title this tiny thing would go through life addressing him as. At least she hadn't said 'you pathetic sap,' though it might as well have been.

"Alright. We'll go find that damned hanar doll."


End file.
